Denis Smith - The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

‘“Captain Jex! Captain Jex!” I cried. As I did so, he stirred slightly, lifted his head from the floor and opened his eyes, but his features expressed confusion. ‘‘What has happened?’’ I asked.

‘“I don’t know,” said he, rubbing his eyes. “I can’t seem to remember. I must have come over faint, I suppose, but it’s never happened to me before.”

‘Even as he spoke, I saw that that horrid box was lying open on the floor beside him.

‘“The box!” I cried. “Did you open it?”

‘“Why, yes,” said he, looking in puzzlement from me to the box and back again, as he stood up. “It happened to catch my eye and I picked it up to have a closer look at it. I opened the lid and then I can’t remember any more. Why do you ask?”

‘“My uncle had just opened that box when he had some kind of seizure and died,” I said.

‘“Good God!” cried Captain Jex in alarm. “Let’s get the thing closed straight away, then!” With a quick stoop, he picked up the box from the floor, clapped the lid shut and replaced it on the sideboard. You will understand, then, Mr Holmes, why I regard that box with such horror, Since that moment, I have not touched it. But if the box does have some evil power, it is but the means by which someone has attacked my uncle. Someone deliberately sent it to him, with malice in his heart. It is that person that is the source of the evil!’

‘Does your uncle have any enemies?’ asked Holmes.

Miss Montague shook her head. ‘He has many political opponents, but I doubt that any of them would do anything so wicked as this,’ said she. ‘I do recall an odd incident about three weeks ago, however,’ she added after a moment, ‘which I had quite forgotten until now. My uncle had returned home in a state of great anxiety. He asked me if there had been any callers at the house that day and I said that there had not.

‘“What is it, Uncle?” said I. “Why do you ask?”

‘“It is nothing,” returned he, in an angry voice. “I thought I saw someone I knew, at the railway station, that is all. Forget that I asked.”’

Sherlock Holmes sat for a moment in silence. ‘I take it there was no letter in the parcel that contained the box,’ said he at length.

‘No, nor any label on the outside to indicate who or where it had come from.’

‘Did you observe where the parcel had been posted?’

‘Charing Cross Post Office.’

‘Unfortunately, that is not very helpful,’ said Holmes. ‘So many parcels are received there that our chances of tracing any one of them are practically nil. Tell me, Miss Montague,’ he added after a moment, ‘did it seem to you that the parcel was damaged in any way when you received it?’

‘Why, yes, it was,’ returned his visitor in surprise. ‘The brown paper it was wrapped in was torn in several places. I pointed this out to the postman, and he said that it had been in that condition when he had received it and must therefore have been mishandled at one of the central sorting offices. As no real damage appeared to have been done to it, however, I gave it no further thought.’

Holmes nodded and I could see from the little smile of satisfaction upon his face that he had already begun to formulate a theory. ‘Did Captain Jex say where he was staying at present?’ he asked his visitor.

‘He mentioned that I might reach him at the Old Ship Inn at Greenwich,’ replied she.

‘Very well,’ said Holmes. ‘I shall look into the matter for you. Are you returning to Wharncliffe Crescent now?’

‘Yes. Mrs Eardley is coming today, as I mentioned, and I wish to be there when she arrives.’

Holmes nodded. ‘I shall call at the house this afternoon, Miss Montague. Until then, you must put all thoughts of that wooden box out of your mind. Do not attempt to do anything with it. Indeed, it is probably best if you do not even enter the room which contains the box and you must keep the door firmly closed. Do you understand?’

When his visitor had left us, I asked my friend why he was delaying his visit to Norwood until the afternoon.

‘Because,’ said he, ‘I wish to go somewhere else first.’

‘Where?’

‘Greenwich. Do you wish to come?’

‘Certainly. You think, then, that Captain Jex may be able to shed some light on the matter?’

‘“Shedding light” scarcely does his position justice, Watson. Captain Jex is almost certainly the pivot around which the whole of the case revolves. Surely that is apparent, if anything is! I doubt we shall get to the bottom of it unless we can lay our hands on him.’

I was surprised at Holmes’s remark and confess I could not understand his great interest in this man, Jex. But my friend would say no more and I was left to ponder what might be in his mind. Forty minutes later, we boarded the Greenwich train at Charing Cross, and forty minutes after that we were speaking to the landlord of the Old Ship Inn. Our enquiries, however, were met with disappointment. The landlord remembered Captain Jex very well, but informed us that he had paid his bill on Monday, the twentieth, and left that day.

‘Did he leave a forwarding address?’ asked Holmes, but the manager shook his head.

‘He told me that if anyone came looking for him, I was to say that he had gone to stay with Captain McNeill; but he gave no address.’

‘Well, well,’ said Holmes in a philosophical tone, as we walked to the railway station, ‘Captain Jex’s disappearance is no more than I had expected; but we could not neglect the possibility of finding him still here, however slight the chance. Now we had best get down to Norwood without further delay. You will come?’

‘Most certainly,’ I said. I was keen to see what my friend might learn at Norwood. He appeared to have some very definite theory as to what lay behind the facts we had heard from Miss Montague. What this theory might be, I could not imagine, but knowing my friend’s remarkable abilities as I did, I could not doubt that, like a ship following the Pole Star, his course was set unerringly for the solution of the mystery.

A ten-minute walk from Norwood Junction brought us to Wharncliffe Crescent, a pleasant tree-lined road of attractive modern villas, set back a little behind neat front gardens. As we turned the corner, however, my friend stopped. Some way ahead of us, a small knot of people was assembled on the pavement and a uniformed policeman stood on duty.

‘Halloa!’ cried Holmes. ‘This looks a bad business, Watson! Surely Miss Montague has not ignored the instructions I gave her?’

We hurried forward and, as we did so, a tall, burly man in a light raincoat and soft-brimmed hat emerged from the house in front of which the crowd was gathered, and I recognised Inspector Athelney Jones of Scotland Yard.

‘Mr Holmes!’ cried he in surprise, as we met him at the gate. ‘I don’t know how you got here so quickly, but, take it from me, you’ve wasted your time.’

‘What has happened?’ asked Holmes.

‘Another death. Heart failure again, by the look of it. There’s no reason for me to be here, really, but two deaths in three days sounded a little suspicious, so, as I happened to be at Norwood Police Station, I thought I’d best take a look. However, there’s nothing in it. It’s obviously just some sort of family weakness, because, of course, the dead man and woman were related.’

I saw Holmes’s face fall. ‘Is it Miss Montague?’ he asked.

‘Oh, no, she’s all right. She’s just been telling me what she told you earlier. It’s Furnival’s sister that’s died. Come inside and I’ll show you. Ask these people to move along, will you, Constable,’ he said to the policeman at the gate. ‘There’s nothing to see here.’